Week beginning 7th November

By the end of the week the main body of the work has been completed. The music is finished and I have a copy of the work on dvd which is ready. I just need to watch it a few times to check there are no faults in playback etc.

All the other elements are coming together, there are a few things to finish off but most of the work is complete.

On Monday or Tuesday I will be setting up the work with Richard Jones at the x-centre in time for the start on Wednesday.

Week beginning 31st October

The week started with a concentration on practical issues. On Monday I finally got to visit the X-centre and had a look round at the space and the equipment etc that would be available for the installation. It all looks very promising. Also on Monday I had a phone call from BBC Devon regarding their online coverage of the event – by Monday evening the web page was complete and hopefully this will attract the attention of more people.

The music has continued to develop – but there is still more to be done although by the end of the week I have an almost finished version. This means that I have failed to meet the target of 4th November but the work is close to completion and should be ready by the end of next week (still in plenty of time!)

On Friday 4th I, along with the other award winners went to the Guildhall to be presented with our cheques by the Mayor. I was also asked to make a short acceptance speech on behalf of all the award winners which went ok.

I’m entering the last few stages now and there is still a fair amount to do. The main part of the installation (the music and video) is almost complete but there is still a lot more work to be done on publicity and the other elements of the installation (text, pictures etc).

Week beginning 24th October

Still continuing to work on two fronts, the publicity and the music.
The poster has been put up in a few places, I have continued to email people about the project – this has resulted in a message from Devon online who want to do an article on their web page for next week. I have also been asked to make a short speech at the award ceremony on Friday of next week!

I have changed the music around so that the original opening section is now the final section and the mirrored section is at the start of the piece. I have also added a few processed elements into the centre section where I felt the music needed a little bit more. I’m fairly happy with the way it’s progressing so far – I have a couple of ideas to try out over this week but my target is to have the work completed by Friday 4th November so that I have plenty of time to concentrate on the practical and administrative elements.

Week beginning 17th October

More of the same really for this week – I have continued to work on two fronts - publicity and the music.

The website now has a link from Crediton rural arts and music project (crampdevon) and I’ve sent out more emails to publicise the event further. I have also produced the poster which I have put up in a few places and will continue to do that over the next couple of weeks. I have also printed the 25 stills from each hour of the video which will be included in the installation for people to write on. I am also looking at the possibility of having a computer that people will be able to look at all the photographs that I took through the hoarding windows on it.

The music has progressed significantly. It has changed considerably from the original idea of having 25 variations – I have instead started with a fully composed one minute section that consists of nine parts – as each minute progresses one (or two) of these parts are removed. This process is then reversed so that the music is rebuilt again. The end section is a mirror image of the opening. However after listening to this I think it may be better if the mirrored section becomes the opening section – something to try next week?

Week beginning 10th October

This week has been spent working on two areas of the work, one practical and one creative.

On the practical side of things I have concentrated on bringing the website up to date, adding a connected blog site and publicising the project. I have sent out a number of emails with links to both the website and the blog and have received a good response from people who have looked at it. I have also had offers of help with the publicity through the forwarding of the web addresses to others. There is more emailing to do next week but overall this has been a good start.

I have also worked on producing a poster which is ready to print and I will hopefully be visiting the x-centre next week to drop in some posters etc and publicise the event further.

The music has also progressed satisfactorily. I have used a variation of the compositional system that I have developed which uses numerical series to trigger events in the music. For this piece the numerical series has been generated by the time that each minute of video started to record. (So if filming started at 14:57 this would generate the number row 1,4,5,7). I have also decided that the music will not only work by the use of subtraction and addition as I had previously planned but will also work by changing the sound quality; for example when the film has been shot at night time the sound will imitate that.

Week beginning 3rd October

I have started to write the music that will accompany the film. I began with the idea of having one piece lasting for one minute and writing 24 variations of that. I started by writing a one minute piece – composed in full, beginning on the chord of E (simply because of the number of es in the name Exeter!).

I have subsequently decided that the music should reflect the process of demolition and redevelopment. So it will start as a finished section, elements will gradually be removed until nothing but silence is left. New elements will then be added slowly until, by the end, it is once again complete.

I have also started to think about publicity, posters etc and continued to update the website and started this blog!

Week Beginning 26th September

This week I have concentrated on the still images and developing the website by adding these pages and the photographs. I have also been discussing with Richard Jones (who collaborated with me for the installation piece Transition for last year’s Exeter Fringe Festival) different ways for the whole project to be displayed. The film will be displayed on a large screen television – but there will also be some extras. We thought about having a separate screen that would display a slideshow of the still images and also like the idea of having a still image from each hour of the video on display that people can write on with their observations of what they have seen happening in that minute – have they noticed something that no one else has seen yet? There will also be a comments book beside the installation where, hopefully, people will write not only about the installation but also about the Princesshay development as a whole.

At the end of the week I received an invite from the mayor for a reception for the award winners to be held at the Guildhall in November.